Friday, April 04, 2008

As I'm sure most of you are aware, backflagging has been a hot topic for EQ for quite a while now. The complex flagging mechanisms for older expansions can make it difficult for guilds that take on new people to experience the content they are wanting to do. With the sheer amount of content between Qeynos and Crystallos it can be extremely difficult for new players to catch up with their friends in any reasonable time frame.

So, in order to make it easier for players to access appropriate content we would like to make some changes to previous flags. All of the existing flags will stay in place, as will the various quest rewards that were additional benefits to their completion. However, the following zones will have an alternate entry criteria of a minimum level. It's important to know that either the previous key OR the new minimum level is required to enter the zone, not both.

The various flag requirements for actually spawning the instances and stuff have not been changed as of this time. So you'll still need 1 guy who has the flags to spawn them in many cases. We're going to look at those and evaluate them on a case by case basis and may change some of them in the future.

- Rytan_the_Wyrmlord, EQ Asst. Lead Designer

Two things to note here:

First, these changes won't occur on the progression server. The point of that server is to experience content as it was released as much as possible, so this runs contrary to that. The work Rytan has been doing has included a check to negate the changes if we're on a progression server. When the progression server eventually catches up to normal servers and essentially becomes a normal server, these changes will kick in.

Second, this is part of a larger push aimed at updating the low to mid-tier game in a way that will culiminate in events aimed squarely at attracting new players and people who have left over the years. This isn't the first change we've made like this recently and certainly not the last. There are a number of other things that will roll out over the next few months so if you're upset about this change because you feel the way to keep the game healthy is to continue to make sure that people new to the game or returning to the game have as steep a hill to climb as those of us who did the climb when the mid level game was thriving and the hill was much smaller, then I'll apologize in advance because you're not going to be getting happier anytime soon. I understand the feeling that it cheapens what you personally had to do to get into the content at the time and Rytan is working out some rewards for that effort, but I think continuing to attract new players that you can actually play the game with once they reach your level is a bit more important than that and, frankly, the online landscape isn't the same as it was. People simply won't tolerate what they would even a couple years ago so we're working to address that.